What to Feed Your

Portuguese Water Dog

The Portuguese Water Dog is a working breed with high energy. When you first get your puppy you will notice he’s very mouthy, which means that shoes, slacks, dresses are all in danger of being ruined by your pup. My Porti, Goji, was at a friend’s house for a few hours, and he managed to find her clothes closet and found a pair of shoes she had recently worn in Portugal at a wedding. He ruined the shoe, and we had to get it fixed at the shoe repair store. He needed something to chew, and the familiar instinctual smells of Portugal was the ideal thing for him to masticate.

The Porti needs high octane food to fuel this high energy.  I tried everything,  and by seeing what he liked and what concurred with his digestion, we settled on a diet which he mostly eats to this day.

There is a lot of information about the raw food diet and PWD’s.  I used to purchase Goji some steaks at Safeway, or chicken parts, or pork, or lamb, but he would just go on my deck and stare at them. Most other dogs and breeds would devour this food in seconds, but Goji would just stare at it. I’d paste some cheeze wiz on it, to make it more appealing, and that worked a little, but then it stopped working.  I’d give him a Hugeroasted bone, the type you see at the pet food store, and he had like that, but then it stopped. When I gave him a raw bone, he would bury it.  Now this burying action is instinctual, and it is very adorable when his snout is brown from the ground burying activity, but what about the good money I was spending on the bone?

Days would go by, and sometime in the future Goji would go outside and come back with the buried bone, and show it off to us, then chew on it for an hour or so. These dogs prefer decomposed meat over new meat.

So Goji would not eat the raw food much, and there was no canned food he liked, and kibble was beneath him. I cannot feed him dried salmon treats all day, they’re $40 per pound! It took some luck and a lot of trial and error to settle on a diet that appeals and suits him. This is what I found:

• Breakfast: not much, maybe a few treats as I listed in the training article
• Lunch,:hardly anything, maybe a biscuit
• Dinner: Prairie raw meats pattie, Bil-Jac kibble, cow ears

I’m going to go into more detail in another post, and your Porti may be different, so let’s see about that another time.

Here’s an update of what I bought today, , at PetSmart:

ToyShoppe Playables Tennis BallsTotal spent about $100

Image by DragonWoman via Flickr

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